Disclaimer: Robin Hood is the BBC's and Tiger Aspect's. Fic title is William Wordsworth's. Also drew inspiration from the line 'Not without hope we suffer an we mourn' (also from a WW poem) and the song Someone Like You by Adele.
Characters/Pairings: Robin, Will, Marian; Will/Marian, Robin/Marian
Summary: The day Robin leaves, it kills Will to see her.
Written for: RHFC Yuku 2nd Ficathon: Unusual Pairings
Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour
The day Robin leaves, it kills Will to see her. From the back of the crowd he watches her closely, the missing sparkle in her eyes as much of a dagger to his heart as the scarlet cross emblazoned across Robin's chest is to hers. He knows she'd have refused to see him off, except she won't give him the satisfaction of knowing he has hurt her. She'd never said so much of course – even to him – but he sees it in her face as she struggles to bid good fortune to him in just the same manner as she does all the young men who go off to war – detached, dutiful, demure. Her attempts are valiant, but in vain; he sees her pain seeping through this front no matter how thick and high she builds up the barriers around her.
She turns her head away from Robin, refuses to meet his pleading eyes, tugs her hand sharply from his grasp when he reaches for her and does not even acknowledge his apologies, let alone respond. Though Will might have revelled in the disdain she appears to hold for Robin how, the evidence of her sorrow stops any such thought from crossing his mind. She holds back her tears defiantly until Robin has disappeared into the sunset, but he sees the armour slipping. In an instant he's by her side, and he's led her away to a quiet corner before it falls completely and the whole sees, taking her in his arms and holding her to his chest as she buries her face in his chest and cries.
He rests his chin on top of her head and looks up to the sky, biting his lip and blinking away his own tears. He strokes her hair and rocks her gently.
In the weeks that follow and turn into months, there is still no change. The pallor of her face, the shadows under her eyes, and the tears that threaten to fall down tracks already stained pierce his heart like an arrow – one of the stupid shards he insisted on showing off with. Every time he sees her she looks smaller and frailer still, and he's sure that a buffeting wind would carry her away with ease.
He holds her tighter still, as if to protect and shield her, but for all the embraces in the world he cannot ease the quiver in her breathing that betrays her silent weeping.
:::
She's so caught up in her own grief that she fails to notice the obvious. She puts her arms around his waist and rests her head on his chest and still she doesn't see it. In the small hours of one morning, there's a knock on the front door, soft and hesitant. Her eyelids flutter open and she rises from the fireside chair she spends each night in, only managing to sleep when she's too exhausted not to. She crosses the room and opens the door.
She hadn't noticed there was a storm outside – although, she considers in hindsight, it has been brewing for days – until now. His head is bowed and his shoulders hunched against the ferocious winds, and the lightning in the distance illuminates his bedraggled form. He's soaked through from the rain, but she can tell that the glistening in his eyes and down his cheeks is for an altogether reason different.
She leads him into the house and to the seat she had vacated. She finds a thick blanket and wraps it around him, then kneels on the floor in front of him and takes his frozen hands in her own. Icy water drips from his hair and onto the cold flagstones. It seeps into her skirts, but she takes no notice. She just watches him struggle to form the words, entwines her fingers in his, and then waits for him to speak.
She listens in silence as he tells her, tears flowing freely now without even the cover of rain. He doesn't say how his mother died, but she can guess. It all becomes clear now; his jutting ribs as she held him, the frailty of the arms that wrapped around her... All this time... And to think that she'd been so wrapped up in her own pathetic misery that she hadn't even noticed how thin Will had become, how little food he has had all those hours he had spent with her, trying to get to eat something of the plentiful platters she so selfishly pushed away. She'd shut herself in her room for most of the harsh winter, not paying a single thought to the villagers who toiled out in the icy winds, the bare scrapings they earned not enough to feed their families. Too selfish to think of others around her, to even notice her friend's suffering – his family's suffering, even the whole county's suffering.
She refuses to let the tears that gathered in the corners of her own eyes spill down her cheeks. What right does she have, to shed tears when she could have so easily prevented his suffering. She'd had the gall, the sheer self-centred arrogance to toss food away without a single care, without a single thought crossing her mind of those so close to her who would have coveted it. She'd made the choice to waste away to nothing; for others it had been forced on them. And she hadn't even noticed.
No, she has no right to cry, to share in Will's grief, when she has as good as caused it. Instead she rises up on her knees and wraps her arms around him, and holds him long into the night.
:::
She does not attend the funeral, although he searches for her face amongst the crowd of mourners. She walks her father to the church and then slips away silently, unnoticed by those who have come to pay their respects. She slinks back to Knighton, steals into the house and up to her room. She digs out the thick cloak she cannot remember ever wearing and cuts eye-holes into a strip of leather, finds some old clothes that will disguise her feminine figure, and a strip of cloth to conceal the parts of her face that the mask will not.
Later that day she rides into Nottingham and, baker by baker, butcher by butcher, gathers what else she needs.
Even later that day, she feigns the excuse of embroidery for the first time, and the Nightwatchman is born. Food and medicine and money are placed out for those in need, on window-sills and door-steps and in gaps in crumbling mortar, and she flits from house to house unnoticed, a mere flicker of candlelight in the shadows. She is not seeking glory; she is not looking to be loved. She hears the name they have given her and the praises they sing and if anything it shames her.
She pauses outside one particular window, and dares to peek in. It's pitch-black inside, but she knows at least one inhabitant isn't asleep, because she can hear the sound of muffled crying. Ashamed, she ducks her head back and, even more ashamed, she places some loaves on the window-ledge. It's the least she can do, but it's no way near enough, and it's far, far too late.
A fresh wave of guilt washes over her, embeds itself into the pits of her stomach and tries to claw its way out. If she hadn't been so selfish, if she had stopped pitying herself for long enough, she could have stopped this. Could have helped them before it came to this, before the loss of a mother, a wife, a friend. Not after.
Hot tears spill over her cheeks, but she wipes them away furiously. She clenches her fists so hard that her nails cut her palms and cause them to bleed, but she digs them in deeper still. Her breaths are harsh and strained when she takes them, but she welcomes the burn in her throat and choking sensation. After all, what is a bruise or a sore throat or a cut in the palm of one's hand when Jane is dead, and her sons grieve long into the night for the mother they will never again know.
She swallows to rid herself of the bitter taste but it lingers still. She doesn't deserve to be a lady of Knighton, doesn't deserve to give words of comfort to her friend in his sorrow, doesn't deserve to have so much when the rest of the world has so little.
So she resolves to do something. And if this 'something' is dangerous, if it puts her life at risk, her position, everything she has ever known, then so be it.
The least she can do is try.